Pete the Canadian

 Pete the  Canadian

 

     Ah, the lost Winter of 1974, dwelling in the freeway dominated apartment on Church Lane in Brentwood.  Despite just over two years in the building there are stories galore inside and outside of the eight units that sat alongside the San Diego freeway at the beginning of the  Sepulveda Pass. I moved there when Zeke got a job in Ventura county and I could no longer stay in the wonderful Veteran and Ohio pad that was Greg's favorite spot. Church Lane had it's charms but it demanded you speak and listen louder because of the freeway roaring that went on all day and all night. I moved there on the advice of Susan Roberts who worked with me at the Central Ticket Office of UCLA and I paid the whopping rent of $140 a month that also included me putting out the trash on that day of the week. In the 1970's the West side was the best side and Church was a convenient meeting place for the regular crew of Greg, Smitty, Bobcat, Ed and occasionally Timo. My neighbors on my side of the building were the One Armed Bandit, ZaZa, VaVa, The Winker and Susan. I was the only man in the place and my unit was normally filled with noise, pot smoke, drunken conversations and loud music sometimes into the wee hours. Despite the fact it was the 1970's we were still trying to be hippies and I finally cut my shoulder length hair for Mother's day of the previous year. Poor Mrs. Winkleman was my downstairs neighbor who was a once wealthy widow now living out her final years on what was left of her husband's estate. She bore the brunt of our selfish shenanigans. Setting aside another hundred stories I only describe one which was a tale Greg repeated with outrage throughout the years. Even though there were many news stories of Manson-like murderers lurking in LA we used to pick up hitchhikers because we were peace, love, Joy...man. So Greg and I were smoking our joints and playing probably some  Al Stewart when cousin Kent showed up as planned motoring down from the Conejo in his shoutmobile. Being a peace child he had picked up a hitchiker named Pete who was Canadian and in need of a place to crash for the night. While we would have preferred to tell ourselves the same stories we had been telling for years we had to accomodate the foreign visitor who was a hippy and was spreading love. Passing him our precious joints Greg gleefully told him about his cousins who had roots in  British Columbia and described their groovy pads in Victoria. Every word out of this prick Pete's mouth was a put-down or insult and he dismissed the town as "a snaky little place" and proceeded to bogart the joints and not spread love. He was not cool...man. Eventually, I got out some sleeping bags and left Pete and Kevin to the couches and turned in. Greg had gone back to Saturn street away from the bad vibes. When I came out in the morning I found the slumbering Kent rising up like a bear and seeing Pete had left without a thank you or fare thee well. The only sign of his presence was the absence of the roaches in the ash trays and a Guess Who album gone with the Canadian wind.